Our kiddo finally decided to name our robot vacuum. She went with Hermit Crab. Hermie for short.

It makes sense. The little guy scuttles across the floor using it's two front "claws" to eat things. Then it scurries back under the bookcase to recharge. It's not the name we would have chosen (our working name, courtesy of the Husband, was Watney) but it works. 

Now, it's a lot easier to anthropomorphize this robot. It's definitely a "he" to me. I talk to him as he works. I beg forgiveness when I get the way. I scold him when he gets stuck in the same one spot every time he works. I may or may not drop a few crumbs in his path. Little Hermie is now a pet. 

It's not the only inanimate object I've named. Mostly, I name plants. We've got Phil and Collins floating about in the living room. Scarlet is the massive tree in our bedroom. Our cable box is Pete - for reasons only my post-college roommates will understand.

I find that naming things leads me to value them more. These objects are not "real" to me, but their use is more important. In naming something, I've given it status above other items that are just objects.

Do you name inanimate things?

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I crossed the halfway point in Emily Oster’s The Family Firm. My comments from last week still hold. Like the advice, hate the framing.

Also this week, I finished reading Jonathan Mooney’s Normal Sucks: How to Live, Learn, and Thrive, Outside the Lines for work. (It’s the coming academic year’s common read.) The book is about how we’ve pathologized neurodiversity as something to be fixed rather than embraced. The text is a touch repetitive, but Mooney’s point and research are sound.

• How you should store bananas. [Real Simple]

• One woman's story showcases our changing relationship with burial. [WaPo - gift link]

• The many nations of the United States. [The Similitude]

• Earth is really pretty sometimes. [Colossal]

• Who gets to sit on the benches? [The Deleted Scenes]

• Planning for a great beach reading day. [BOOK RIOT]

• *Raging* This will lead to more suppression. [Salon]

• How to set boundaries for work-life balance. [HubSpot]

• Do we need suffering to succeed? [Hidden Brain]

• Why Brunch? [Dish City]

• Honey is delicious medicine. [Short Wave]

• The sound of New Orleans. [Atlas Obscura]

• On my night to pick our movie, I wasn't sure what I was in the mood for. I settled on Munich: The Edge of War. It's not bad. The Hitler was not the best casting but I wonder if that was deliberate. He came across as snake like and creepy. Also, the film made it seem like the war happened because two men, really boys, failed in their goal. That was certainly not historically accurate.[Netflix]

• We opted to spend some money to stream Uncharted. It was a lot of fun. There are tons of Easter eggs for gamers. I'm not a gamer, but even I picked up on a few things. To fully enjoy this movie, you need to just ignore the obvious things that wouldn't work in real life - like, how did those ships get there? How? (That bit still bugs me.) [Amazon Prime]

• For our new weekday streaming, I decided that we need to watch Dawson's Creek. I saw parts of the first three-ish seasons when I was in high school but never finished the whole series. I figured, why not dive back in from the start? I'm treating this like a summer indulgence but it will definitely take us longer than the summer to finish. We finished the first season and, man, is this show of it's time. The costumes, the narrative, the music - it's all very late 90s. [HBO Max]

• I love meatballs and I love one pan meals. While you do have to make the meatballs in their own bowl, one-pan basil chicken meatballs with “orzotto” is a hefty meal with basically one dish. This was tasty, but my meatballs stuck to the pan. That was aggravating. [Caroline Chambers]

• The only way we celebrated Independence Day was through food. Lacking outdoor space for a grill, we opted to sous vide bratwurst and then finish them in a grill pan on the stove. We had sides of diced baked sweet potato and coleslaw. Definitely recommend whole grain mustard on the brat and adding a pint of beer. [Serious Eats]

I love Right Place Studio. I’ve attended two of Samantha’s classes and have a few pieces of her original art hanging on my walls. She shared a GIF version of her flamingles print on Instagram this week and it’s just great.

I do a lot of writing but am, admittedly, not the best writer. I will draft material and then edit it four times before I share it. Inevitably, I will find more errors after hitting publish. I recently discovered Copywriting Prompts. This is a free tool that sends daily prompts to help you improve your writing and editing. You can access the prompts on the website or sign up to get them via email.

Looking at my to do list and it’s full of items I want to keep procrastinating. But, I no longer have anything productive to procrastinate them with.